Travis Fatchen looms large as Mount Gambier weighs up jailed MP's replacement

There are 47 green-leather seats in South Australia's parliament, but only one of them is empty.

For six months, Mount Gambier has been unaccounted-for in the state's lower house.

Its MP of 11 years, Troy Bell, was jailed in October for stealing more than $430,000 in public money meant for not-for-profit education organisations.

No by-election was held to replace him.

But Bell's former electorate office — a short walk from Mount Gambier's cave garden and "blue blob" sculpture — is still open.

While Bell's name has been scrubbed out, a sign hanging outside bears his slogan, "Working with you, for you".

Travis Fatchen, Bell's office manager for 11 years, kept working there after his boss was sentenced to five years in jail.

He is now running for Mount Gambier as an independent, just as Bell did.

"One thing that stuck with me is he used to say, 'I just want to make this place a better place than when I started.'

"As a boss and a work colleague, you would not find a nicer person."

Bell was elected as a Liberal MP in 2014. He resigned from the party three years later after being charged with theft and fraud, but was re-elected twice as an independent.

His offending occurred before he became an MP and worked with Mr Fatchen.

Asked if he was surprised how Bell's court battle played out, Mr Fatchen said: "Right from the get-go, Troy expressed his innocence."

"He seems a genuine guy, so we stuck by him right throughout," he said.

"So yeah, look, when the findings came out, [I] probably was genuinely shocked.

"But yeah, these things happen, I guess."

'He's got the gift of incumbency'

Mr Fatchen is one of 11 candidates vying to etch their name on Bell's vacant office.

The 53-year-old does not view his time working with the now-jailed MP as a liability.

Rather, he is touting it as evidence he can hit the ground running.

"I learnt a lot with Troy over the years," he said.

"When he was sitting in parliament, I would kind of be the proxy member in town."

Former independent Mount Gambier MP Rory McEwen said the connection made Mr Fatchen the frontrunner in a crowded field.

"Incumbency to a sitting member is always five to 10 per cent, but if you've run the office of a sitting member, you're just as well known.

"You're following up everything that comes into the office, you're programming the member, you're very well engaged."

Mr McEwen, who represented the city from 1997 to 2010, said it was a "safe independent seat".

"What this community wants is a strong, powerful advocate for them, not some party hack back in Adelaide," Mr McEwen said.

He also did not believe One Nation would be a factor in Mount Gambier, despite the right-wing party polling higher than the Liberals.

"To think they have a presence would be misrepresenting who we are as a community," he said.

One Nation's candidate, Anne-Marie Loef, was not available for comment.

Nightmare in the Mount

Rory McEwen and Troy Bell are two dark chapters in the Liberal Party's disastrous relationship with Mount Gambier.

For what is notionally a safe, conservative seat, the party has won it just once in 28 years.

The nightmare began in 1997 when Mr McEwen narrowly won as an independent after being snubbed for Liberal preselection.

When Mr McEwen retired in 2010, another Liberal preselection snub, Don Pegler, stopped the party winning it back.

Bell appeared to break the independent streak when he won in 2014, until his criminal charges forced him out of the party.

Lawyer Lamorna Alexander is the latest Liberal candidate trying to convince Mount Gambier voters to give the party another look.

"There is a perception here in Mount Gambier where an independent voice is the voice of the community, and that's just simply not true," she said.

"A strong party voice, a Liberal Party voice, is a community voice as well.

"We need someone who … has a seat at that table so can direct policy and funds here."

Ms Alexander, a former self-employed beauty therapist who grew up in Kingston and raised her family in Penola before moving to Mount Gambier, said she knew Mr Fatchen and he was a "good guy".

But she said it was "up to the community to decide whether they want that succession plan that's been put in place by Troy Bell to have his office staffer step up".

Mr Fatchen denied to the ABC that Bell put in place a succession plan.

"Once the position became vacant, I then made the decision — after discussing it with my family — to run for the seat of Mount Gambier," he said in a statement.

Ms Alexander's campaign has also distributed flyers warning that a voting for an independent is an "unlucky dip".

The materials highlight the case of Bell and former Liberal-turned-independent MP Nick McBride, who has been charged with domestic violence offences in the neighbouring seat of MacKillop.

"You have got independents who — they're not being vetted," Ms Alexander said.

"I was thoroughly vetted, the Liberal Party dug quite deep into my background to ensure that I am a candidate that has got no hidden secrets."

When it was pointed out that Bell was originally preselected as a Liberal candidate, she said: "I guess you know you learn from those experiences — that vetting is very thorough right now."

A government presence

While Mr Fatchen and Ms Alexander are running against each other, they are fighting on many of the same issues.

Both candidates have talked about the poor condition of local roads, lack of access to health services and improving the Patient Assisted Transport Scheme.

They have also both supported the longstanding campaign for a cancer radiation centre in Mount Gambier.

Meanwhile, Labor candidate Matthew Key is talking up his party's chances.

Mr Key, a public school teacher and nephew of former Labor minister Steph Key, said there had been a shift in the community's attitude towards Labor.

The party has not held Mount Gambier since 1975 and did not win many friends after its 2012 decision to privatise the local forestry industry.

But Premier Peter Malinauskas has made 16 visits to the South East since taking office, according to Mr Key, who is running on the government's investments in a new local technical college and forestry centre.

Asked about his chances of winning the seat, Mr Key said: "I think there's a good chance, yeah, absolutely."